Comments on: Final Cut Pro’s achilles heel or how I hate the reconnection dance

By: What I’m Working On: “Ambling Alp” by Yeasayer « notes from the edit bay

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:49:51 +0000

[...] I then copied our offline media to two separate external FW800 drives and gave both the same name. Radical Friend then received one drive and I retained one for myself, setting forth on the editing process. After logging, syncing, and grouping were completed, RF and I both took a stab at creating our own videos. We would email each other cuts back and forth, exchanging ideas fluidly by simply exchanging FCP project files that linked to the media on each of our computers. Because the file path to the media on each computer was the same, we never had to relink any media, or as Scott Simmons calls it, “the reconnection dance“. [...]

By: The Editblog » Shane’s Adobe Premiere Pro questions are good ones

The Editblog » Shane’s Adobe Premiere Pro questions are good ones — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:09:07 +0000

[...] a lot of different drives and directories then this will get old very fast … even older than doing the same thing in FCP. Once you do find the file it will reconnect all of the media that is missing in that directory so [...]

By: The Editblog » Why does FCP unrender my rendered transition?

The Editblog » Why does FCP unrender my rendered transition? — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:08:18 +0000

[...] you listened to the last episode of That Post Show or read the recent post here on Final Cut Pro media management you know that one of my biggest complaints with FCP is that its media management and tracking of [...]

By: Bernie Burnalot

Bernie Burnalot — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:21:10 +0000

One of the bigest pains-in-the-ass that makes remounting old projects to make changes a f(&/king nightmare. Thanks for the link for BenÂ´s advice. I will check it out now.

By: Jon Chappell

Jon Chappell — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:56:32 +0000

The reconnection dance as a whole doesn’t bother me so much as the many bugs with it. Sometimes it will say “Files Offline” and then I click Reconnect and the dialog just has loads of blank entries. Other times, it will think a file is offline for some reason so I reconnect to the SAME file and it tells me the length and reel are different!

I hope Apple does a complete rewrite of FCP when Snow Leopard comes out. It’s gotten to the stage where they’ve bolted so many things onto an old codebase that it’s time to start from scratch again IMHO. No new features, just a complete Cocoa rewrite with better media management and full support for OpenCL and Grand Central. That would be awesome.

By: Dylan Reeve

Dylan Reeve — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:15:44 +0000

Maybe I’m not familiar enough with MacOS, but how is the Finder a database that could avoid this? It seems hard to believe that a limitation like that has remained as a holdover from software that was discontinued about 8 years ago.

And even so, my biggest problem with FCPs Media Management is it’s file-centric treatment of media – whereby it can’t connect with media based on metadata such as timecode and reel number.

By: Philip Hodgetts

Philip Hodgetts — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:19:54 +0000

The requirement for literal path to media – causing the reconnection dance – is part of the legacy of Final Cut’s origins as a cross-platform application. The Mac Finder is a database and would not require the literal path, but the app was designed to accommodate this Windows limitation.

Philip

By: Avoiding FCP Reconnecting, an option I use at Buttonpusher

Avoiding FCP Reconnecting, an option I use at Buttonpusher — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:00:44 +0000

[...] at the Editblog, Scott pines for a database-type tool to manage FCP media better. I don’t entirely disagree with the sentiment of his post. FCP is far too loosey-goosey when [...]

By: Dylan Reeve

Dylan Reeve — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 01:03:27 +0000

FCP’s Media Management is easily it’s biggest problem as far as a lot of editors are concerned. Working in an online/offline process or across multiple locations it is way way outclassed by Avid’s workflow. Loader seems like a step in the right direction at least – helping keep things more organised in general, but not really a solution.

The bigget problem I’ve had with FCP’s ‘it is all just files’ approach is that it lacks intelligence – if I have a clip from Tape 00421 and it’s from 01:15:00:00 to 01:25:00:00 already online, there is no way at all that FCP can relink a clip on the timeline that requires 01:16:45:00 to 01:16:55:00 from that tape, unless it was originally from that same file. In the work that I do, where late changes to the edit are not uncommon this is a massive problem, as it means either batch-capturing the new edit again entirely, or manually finding and integrating the changes. Whereas in Avid I take the new sequence, reconnect to existing media and just recapture whatever has changed.

By: Shane Ross

Shane Ross — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:38:12 +0000

Yup…you nailed it. Media management is such a fundamental building block (oops, sounding McCain-ish here) of editing that I am very surprised that Apple hasn’t fixed it. Forget the fancy new fangled features…give us something that is stable and TRUSTWORTHY. When I was back on the Avid for 2 weeks, I was SO happy with the media management I was near tears.

Well, not near tears, but you get the idea.